Bike Hour is not a Parade.

Bike Hour is not a parade. If ever some breakthrough did bring it to world-wide attention, and Bike Hour attracted millions of riders, they would be spread out across millions of separate locations. Local news film crews would have nothing to shoot. Anarchists would have nothing to hijack. No individual rider could even be sure they weren’t the only one riding.

Don’t expect photos like this to appear of Bike Hour

I enjoyed teasing a few mainstream media outlets last March, letting them believe Bike Hour might be a show made for them. As if we would ride to provide broadcasters and journalists fodder for their hackneyed stories! The rise of cycling is coinciding with the democratisation, and atomisation, of media. Cycling and social media are so alike, in their lack of organisation, that I see one as the hand and one as the glove. Every second cyclists has a blog or Facebook gallery dedicated to sharing their bike[s] or their rides. Meanwhile our struggle as cyclists is giving the new media its Vietnam, its Suffragette era, its French Revolution. The rise of bicycle transport is the social revolution the internet needed to demonstrate its unique power. It is a power that can’t be photographed and put on the front page, or even reported as a number of “likes” on any one Facebook page. Bike Hour events pages have been cropping up for separate cities, and I don’t care one little bit about numbers being siphoned from the world-wide events page I started. On the contrary, I look forward to Bike Hour having more schisms than Christmas has dinners.

The New Media age does not make parades.

All that matters is we all remember that 6pm on the equinox dates means its time to be on our bikes.